Gordon Rees Partner Leaves Management After 'Hannity' Appearance

Mercedes Colwin, a litigator at Gordon Rees Scully Mansukhani, has stepped down from her role as managing partner of the firm's New York office following her controversial appearance in a segment that aired last week on Fox News.

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Mercedes Colwin, the managing partner of Gordon Rees Scully Mansukhani’s New York office, has stepped down from firm management following her controversial remarks on Fox News last week about the truthfulness of sexual harassment allegations brought by women.

In an exchange with Hannity, Colwin, herself a former administrative law judge for the New York State Division of Human Rights, told the Fox News personality that it is common for women to lie about instances of sexual harassment for money and political reasons.

“And these individuals, a lot of these women, it’s all about money, and they bank on the fact that these corporations have the reputation that they want to save,” Colwin told Hannity, adding that the actual number of women who were victims of predators were “very few and far between.”

Colwin, who has been with Fox News and Gordon Rees since 2005, took to Twitter in an attempt to clarify her televised remarks.

“First and foremost, I am profoundly sympathetic of anyone who has been the victim of sexual harassment and believe they deserve full and complete protection under the law,” Colwin said in the first of several tweets defending her on-air statements. “Having considered the comments, especially my ‘very few and far between,’ remark which has regretfully caused tumult and pain, it was made in the context of civil cases of sexual harassment that I’ve handled as an attorney and as a judge,” she added.

On Monday, Gordon Rees firmwide managing partner Dion Cominos released a statement addressing Colwin’s comments and confirmed that she had stepped down from all management roles within the firm, which adopted its current name in 2014.

“The [firm] in no way endorses or agrees with any statements which could even remotely be interpreted as minimizing or trivializing the seriousness and gravity of sexual harassment or similarly predatory behaviors, and we renounce them in the strongest possible terms—in fact, contrary to what may have been inferred from what was said during the telecast,” Cominos said in a statement released Monday.

Cominos added that the “sad reality is that the number of women who likely have not been exposed to such repugnant conduct over the course of their personal or professional lives is, unfortunately, few and far between.”

“As one who has personally experienced such treatment and also has a deceased sister who was a victim of domestic violence, it is entirely apparent to me that sexual predators do indeed exist in our society who deserve to be called out, civilly pursued and criminally prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law,” Colwin said. “My intent was not to trivialize or minimize the impact of sexual harassment on any victims of such practices or to condone such behaviors in any setting whether business or personal.”

“I sincerely apologize and am deeply sorry for appearing to diminish this very important issue,” Colwin said in her statement.

This isn’t the first time that Colwin has been embroiled in a scandal at Fox News. In the wake of former network news anchor Gretchen Carlson’s sexual harassment claims against late Fox News chairman and CEO Roger Ailes, Colwin told The Hollywood Reporter that she was “furious” when she heard about Carlson’s suit, which was resolved with a $20 million settlement last year.

Colwin, a litigation partner at Gordon Rees, specializes in employment law, commercial litigation, professional liability and civil rights violations, according to her firm biography page, and she regularly defends Fortune 500 companies against claims of sexual misconduct.

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